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 Post subject: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features....
PostPosted: August 10th, 2019, 23:38 
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Joined: December 31st, 2007, 3:09
Posts: 7
I am looking for a data recovery imaging tool for Windows, DOS, Linux or stand alone that has the following features. May image to drive or file.
I want a graphic interface showing the areas already imaged and their content. Like iRecover from the now defunked DIYdatarecovery.nl as it is scanning a patient drive.
I would like to be able to stop and start it at the positions I want as with DISKPATCH.
I would like a log of the areas I have already processed, the bad sectors listed.
I would like to be able to retry areas already attempted that had previously failed.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Tom


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 12th, 2019, 1:26 
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Joined: December 4th, 2012, 1:35
Posts: 3844
Location: Adelaide, Australia
HDDSuperClone I think will do a large subset of those requirements, if not all of them. Not sure about the second requirement


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 14th, 2019, 15:41 
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Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 21:47
Posts: 309
Location: France
HDDSCViewer is included in HDDLiveCD which contains HDDSuperClone and a few other related tools.
You can see examples of its output here :
https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38446
It doesn't allow (yet) to view the contents of recovered areas.
It is also possible to export the log file from HDDSuperClone in ddrescue format and view it with ddrescueview, which has some extra features / options.


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 14th, 2019, 16:38 
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Joined: February 9th, 2009, 16:13
Posts: 2520
Location: Ontario, Canada
Software wise, ddrescue and hddsuperclone are you best options...and they are free. If you want some serious control over imaging, DeepSpar Disk Imager is the tool for the job.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 14th, 2019, 17:01 
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Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 21:47
Posts: 309
Location: France
Quote:
Software wise, ddrescue and hddsuperclone are you best options...and they are free. If you want some serious control over imaging, DeepSpar Disk Imager is the tool for the job.

In a nutshell, what can it do that software only methods can't ?


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 15th, 2019, 10:18 
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Joined: February 9th, 2009, 16:13
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Location: Ontario, Canada
abolibibelot wrote:
In a nutshell, what can it do that software only methods can't ?

DeepSpar has produced plenty of training videos posted on YouTube, showing how much better it is.

Back in the day when I first heard about DeepSpar, we were using the same software as you. We spent hours, days and weeks cloning unstable drives, with multiple system reboots and even some manual documentation of what sectors we read and didn't read. We had a drive that we had been fighting with for weeks that we sent to DeepSpar as a test case. They had it cloned within a couple hours of receiving the drive. We made our order the next day and haven't looked back since.

A few features that software recovery tend not to have:

- head map & testing
- ability to image based on head (skip sectors associated with a weak or dead head)
- many different logic algorithms based on conditions set, such as skip to next head or skip 1000 sectors on a read timeout
- has the ability to do software & hardware resets, as well as repowering the drive when it is unresponsive
- set the drive to read in various modes, anywhere from PIO mode to UDMA-6
- with the help of the DRE application in Windows, you can target a single file, folder or partition by bitmap
- with the help of DRE, if you know that head 3 is bad, you can generate an HTML file report showing all the files that will be damaged or good without head 3. You can also do a final file report showing the good and damaged files based on whether or not they have damaged/missing sectors in them after the clone is clone is complete

With complete control over the imaging process, you not only can clone a drive faster, you can very quickly diagnose a drive avoid compounding the damage if heads failing.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery


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 Post subject: Re: Looking for a data recovery imaging tool with features..
PostPosted: August 15th, 2019, 19:41 
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Joined: January 29th, 2012, 1:43
Posts: 982
Location: United States
Consider this a DeepSpar vs. HDDSuperClone Pro capability information session. Some of this is theory, and it would be nice for someone to do real case comparisons to prove the theory. But someone that is already using a DeepSpar is too busy doing recoveries to worry about finding time or reason to do any comparison such as this, so there will remain lack of real comparison.

Quote:
DeepSpar has produced plenty of training videos posted on YouTube, showing how much better it is.

Okay, DeepSpar wins here. I don’t have any fancy videos explaining things or showing operation. But any video that explains drive issues and tactics would apply to all software and hardware tools.

Quote:
Back in the day when I first heard about DeepSpar, we were using the same software as you. We spent hours, days and weeks cloning unstable drives, with multiple system reboots and even some manual documentation of what sectors we read and didn't read. We had a drive that we had been fighting with for weeks that we sent to DeepSpar as a test case. They had it cloned within a couple hours of receiving the drive. We made our order the next day and haven't looked back since.

Yes, but you didn’t have HDDSuperClone Pro back then :)

Quote:
A few features that software recovery tend not to have:
- head map & testing
- ability to image based on head (skip sectors associated with a weak or dead head)

Yes, DeepSpar can map heads on supported drives. But what about all the newer drives coming out that even PC3000 does not support? I am sure they could not be mapped. So what then? Oh, wait, what about HDDSuperClone’s self learning head skipping algorithm. It does not need a head map, it figures out how to deal with and skip out of a bad head on the fly. And it does have an analyze feature, although it requires some knowledge to understand the results. So if head mapping is supported, the winner is DeepSpar, but if it is not supported, then the winner is unclear without real testing (I say it could very well be HDDSuperClone). I can say that the self learning head skipping algorithm has been proven to work very well in most cases seen, without the need for physical head mapping.

Quote:
- many different logic algorithms based on conditions set, such as skip to next head or skip 1000 sectors on a read timeout

I don’t have a DeepSpar to compare to, but I do know that HDDSuperClone has several selectable operation phases that have different algorithms, and with many adjustable settings. I would like to think that it could compare to if not beat the algorithm choice ability of the DeepSpar.
Quote:
- has the ability to do software & hardware resets, as well as repowering the drive when it is unresponsive

For SATA drives, HDDSuperClone can do software and hardware (COM) resets. For the older IDE (PATA) drives it can do software resets. And with purchasing a compatible cheap relay and cables, it can do power cycles for both. I do have to admit that it is a bit more complicated, as you have to disable a port to use the direct mode, and have to purchase and wire your own relay. But it does work. So for the price, HDDSuperClone would win for being much much cheaper. But for already having capability easily built in, the DeepSpar would win.
Quote:
- set the drive to read in various modes, anywhere from PIO mode to UDMA-6

Maybe that was true with the older IDE (PATA) drives that you don’t see many of anymore, but I will call that one out for SATA drives, which is most of what is seen for recovery. PIO and UDMA are communication modes of IDE for PATA drives. AHCI is the communication protocol for SATA drives. So technically a SATA drive does not have PIO or UDMA modes. It has SATA (1.5Gbs), SATA2 (3Gbs), or SATA3 (6Gbs) modes. So maybe in some rare cases you could limit a SATA drive to a slower SATA speed and get results, but that really would only be effective for a communication or controller issue. You can try to argue this with me, but that would be because you don’t actually understand how the modes and communication work.

Quote:
- with the help of the DRE application in Windows, you can target a single file, folder or partition by bitmap

HDDSuperClone has a driver mode where the live recovery is presented to the OS as a block device. This can be accessed by the likes of R-Studio to target files and folders to recover. But it is somewhat of a complicated process that I have only explained to a limited extent in the user manual. The bitmap can possibly be done with a partclone command, but that starts to get really complicated, and won’t likely work if there are any errors in the bitmap. So for the price, HDDSuperClone would win, if you are willing to take the time to work with it and figure it out. But for built in easy functionality, DeepSpar would win.

Quote:
- with the help of DRE, if you know that head 3 is bad, you can generate an HTML file report showing all the files that will be damaged or good without head 3. You can also do a final file report showing the good and damaged files based on whether or not they have damaged/missing sectors in them after the clone is clone is complete

Okay, DeepSpar wins on this one. The only way to get a report of files with bad sectors with HDDSuperClone is to use something like R-Studio with the driver mode, and have it sort out the corrupt files after recovery. There is another manual way, by mark-filling the bad sectors on the destination, and then searching through all the files for the mark data, but that is a long slow process.
Quote:
With complete control over the imaging process, you not only can clone a drive faster, you can very quickly diagnose a drive avoid compounding the damage if heads failing.


This is very true. If the head mapping is supported, the DeepSpar would likely be able to do a much better job of diagnosing the issue. But if you were to get used to the analyze function of HDDSuperClone, you should also be able to diagnose a drive before attempting cloning. And none of this considers that a data recovery professional would examine the drive in a clean room environment for physical damage before even powering up the drive, no matter what tool they use for recovery.

In closing, I would like to say that I feel that HDDSuperClone is a poor man’s DeepSpar. It has many of the capabilities at a fraction of the price. It can be a bit more complicated to use, but if you can figure it out, it can be very powerful.

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Home of HDDSuperClone


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